It’s well documented that Rotten absolutely despises it, for a number of reasons. he does however acknowledge GO’s solid performance. but it’s a fiction, and watched next to the documentary “the filth and the fury”, s&n seems like a silly cartoon that caricaturizes some quite extraordinary people.
Oh, yeah, I know Rotten hated it, he even ranted against Joe Strummer, and I know it’s not accurate, although Sid was pretty much a cartoon himself, but as a Pistols fan, do you or anyone else share Johnny Rotten’s hatred for the film?
Johnny Rotten, “sold out” when he did the English butter commercial. I personally never thought punk was music as such, but documentaries such as this caught the excitement of the movement, and even got me listening to black flag.
Johnny Rotten, “sold out” when he did the English butter commercial. I personally never thought punk was music as such, but documentaries such as this caught the excitement of the movement, and even got me listening to black flag.
I love SID AND NANCY, but as a document of the British punk scene, it’s nothing to write home about, full of holes and half-truths and a general lack of understanding of the music and the scene that surrounded it. If you want to know about the Sex Pistols, see THE FILTH AND THE FURY, or better yet read the book ENGLAND’S DREAMING by Jon Savage.
I’m a Sex Pistols fan and have been since 1977 when I first heard their music as a teenager. It’s been years since I saw Sid & Nancy (when it was in it’s theatrical run) and I liked the movie quite a bit even though I recognized that it wasn’t really accurate to what I knew about the facts of the matter. It’s pretty obviously more along the lines of “inspired by” the characters and events than a straightforward biopic. I was at their last concert in San Francisco and if I recall correctly, that gig was depicted in the film – and it looked nothing at all like the scene I remember at the Winterland! I can easiliy understand why John Lydon disliked the movie, but it really doesn’t take much to provoke his ire now does it? >:o)
double post
I’ve always found the film to be great as drama; like the other folks here, I’ve never taken it to be all that accurate. In ways that don’t square with the actual biography of the band, but do reflect any number of underground/grass-roots creative movements (not just punk), I think the film does do a great job of capturing both early phases of excitement and invention, and later phases of decadence and self-destruction.
triple post :(
‘no irish no blacks no dogs’ is worth reading too, if you want to bring books into it. for all the critiques of rotten that float around, you have to at least give him credit for putting in other people’s conflicting views and accounts in his own autobiography.
It isn’t accurate and the Johnny Rotten character is appallingly portrayed, not much better in the McLaren dominated The Great Rock n Roll Swindle, but it is an interesting drama. Has anyone seen Who Killed Nancy?
Sid Vicious’s legacy is Picadilly Circus postcard punks. That says it all really.
I love the Film and the Band. Rotten would dislike anything just to do so. I am a fan of his post-Pistols work as well. But if he liked it like it i would have been more suprised. Chloe Webb was great. Each time i watch it i am quoting her for days.
I like the Pistols but I’m a bigger X-Ray Spex fan and I read that in one of the early scenes they have a thin white girl performing the Spex song ‘Oh Bondage, Up Yours!’ instead of the full figured, young black woman who actually fronted the band. I hate it when they change things like that for no reason and show no respect for a great band. I’ve avoided the movie for awhile just for that. I’ll probably watch it eventually one of these days.
a film with good style and great performances by its two leads, but a movie that was ultimately uncessary, both as a love story and as a biopic. the characters are so ridiculous (as i’m sure they were in real life) that it seems pointless to give a shit about thier relationship. at times i wonderd why they didn’t kill each other sooner. the innacuracy does bother me, the same way Spike Lee inacurately portrayed CBGBs in the late 70s in Summer of Sam—by looking at punks as all spikes and leather and being as grotesque as some of the Goth scene of the 90s. by doing that, you take away some of what was really important about the “movement” as a whole—bored, mostly poor, mostly teenagers, who didn’t see a whole lot of a future for themselves, and only had loud, abrasive music as their outlet. by focusing on tacky sterotypes, the way both Cox and Spike Lee did in their respective films, they kind of delegitimized their own films. by making it about a particular style they lost focus on what could’ve been great dramas. Sid and Nancy came closer than Lee in that respect, but only because his film had a grittier look, and chances are Cox was there when the punk thing happened in England.
i think a better movie would’ve been Johnny & Sid: focusing on their friendship before the band, how the relationship broke apart during the Pistols’ prime, and what was the reason for the band’s importance in the first place in 1970s England.
as far as Rotten being a sellout, i’ll forgive him. this was the guy who, before the bands reunion in the 90s, admitted they only got together because, “We got paid in advanced.” he spent years being broke BECAUSE of the Sex Pistols and alot of the legal shit that went down between him, his bandmates, and McClaren and he just kept on doing his own thing. i think he just got to that age where he figured, “fuck it. i won that battle. i don’t wanna be poor no more” (apologies to Blitz). and he’s kind of a self-parody anyway, so why take him too seriously?
This is a great film. One of my absolute favorites. Do we ask that Herzog be tied down by the facts of his subjects when he’s making non- docs? No. Well this is Cox’s Cobra Verde or Every Man for Himself and God Against All. Cox uses the idea of Sid and Nancy to explore the themes he’s interested in. Like the role of nihilism and anarchy in political, social and personal life and the point at which these ideas stop becoming useful and turn destructive. And that’s just one theme, there’s the rise and fall of artistic movements (breakdancing kids at the end, the shift from the UK to the USA) and the study of two people who claim to believe in nothing, yet are victims of the most romantic and antique of all: that they cannot live without each other. Cox didn’t make a doc, he made an abstraction, an impressionistic study in theme, mood and tone. In his willingness to let go of what a traditional bio-pic is supposed to be and embrace his own vision and conclusions he shows himself to be just as much a product of what was vital and necessary about the punk movement in the first place. Punks not in the details. It’s in the attitude. Criterion should seriously consider re-releasing this.
it was a great film i just wish russ meyer had gotten to do a sex pistols films as he had planned in the 1970s
Now that would have been AMAZING!
Damn, double post… must not keep clicking button.
Triple post… sorry.
I wonder whatever happened to Chloe Webb? I can’t recall her being in much after Sid and Nancy. I thought she was really terrific. I was never sold on the idea that Gary Oldham was Sid though. For starters, he was too old for the role. As for the film itself, I wouldn’t call it great but it was entertaining. To echo what Den wrote, I would have loved to have seen what Russ Meyer would have done with the story of the Sex Pistols. Roger Ebert was originally slated to write the screenplay too. We could have had a punk version of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, done Cockney-style.
Chloe Webb had a featured role in the TV series, “Tales from the City”, available on DVD.
Webb was in The Belly of an Architect. That was around the same time as S&N though, so a while back. She lives in my neighborhood! (Venice Beach).
I am a HUGE fan of The Sex Pistols. Starting from the tender age of about ten when I came home with the “Anarchy In The U.K” single from Cheapo records much to the chagrin of my parents as well as my peers….this was in a time where every girl my age was listening to ’NSync and Britney Spears.
Oh, no. Not this devotchka.
I had heard about this film through the grapevine, and eventually when I was fourteen I rented the VHS at Video Stardom. I put it in the VCR at about 1:00 AM long after the parental units had gone to sleep so as not to awaken them with the profane language I was SO ready to listen to.
And basically…my world turned upside down. Because it was the very night where I was introduced….to the one….and the only…..GARY OLDMAN. sigh
Seven years later I am still totally going to marry him forever and ever…but yeah.
Where was I going with this? Oh yeah. The whole “do Pistols fans hate this film” thing. I can understand why a lot of them would hate this. It is incredibly inaccurate and definitely glamorizing the whole affair between the two. If I were Rotten, I would call it ridiculous on its face as well. But I’m not Johnny Rotten. The thing is, I KNOW it’s not the truth. I’ve read way too many books on the subject to decipher fact from fairy tale….
…But I think that’s really all it is when you get down to the bare bones of it…
A punk fairy tale. And a fucking lovely one it is.
Alonso Díaz de la Vega
I am a Sex Pistols fan myself, and I loved the film because it goes beyond being a Sid Vicious or Sex Pistols biopic, it’s almost something apart, but you’ve got the story and the characters of the band in it, and although it’s full of inaccuracies, I find this a great film that portrays what the 70’s English punk scene was: filthy and furious.